Instructor Active Empathetic Listening and Its Impact on Students’ Math Anxiety

The objectives of this study were twofold. First, the study investigated how instructor active empathetic listening skills affected students’ math anxiety in quantitative reasoning courses. Second, the study replicated prior investigations of gender disparities regarding math anxiety. The results supported a model in which instructors’ active empathetic listening skills of sensing and responding impacted students’ math anxiety through the mediation of perceived immediacy. Further, student gender influenced math anxiety through the mediation of perceived immediacy such that male students were likely to have lower math anxiety than female students.